Introduction

Description

PHP_Archive provides the PHP_Archive class, and
the phar:// stream wrapper. Using PHP_Archive, it is
possible to create self-contained cross-platform PHP libraries and
applications. The file format and principles are identical to the
Phar extension, which is documented in the PHP
manual. PHP_Archive is used to create go-pear.phar
and install-pear-nozlib.phar, distributed with PHP since
PHP version 5.1.0, and used to install the PEAR Installer itself.

The PHP_Archive class differs in approach from the
Phar class in that it does not support
the ArrayAccess interface for accessing internal files,
and does not support iteration over contents using foreach(). However,
full support for the phar:// stream wrapper, support of
Phar-specific metadata setting and retrieval using
PHP_Archive::getPharMetaData() and file-specific metadata
using PHP_Archive::getFileMetaData(), zlib and bzip2
compression of individual files, and archive-wide SHA1/MD5 signature makes
PHP_Archive just as powerful as the Phar extension for distributing phars.

The advanced Phar creation features of PHP_Archive are not yet documented,
but information is available at the API documentation, and an example usage is in cvs at
make-gopear-phar.php.